Several mining practices involve operations in unpredictable and dynamic work environments. Therefore, there is an ever-growing need to achieve higher safety in such practices. To this effect, the mining industry has postulated a mandate to only have minimum personnel physically attend and inspect an operation in situ. As a result, mining practices are increasingly becoming more and more reliant on the use of autonomous technology. Additionally, newer and stricter safety norms are being promulgated by several governments and federal agencies, world over.
Practices such as open-pit mining, which are performed in remote and potentially hazardous areas, make use of automated systems to carry out several conventional mining operations. Open-pit mining usually involves the use of large-sized, complex mining equipment, such as surface drills that involve complex machinery with integrated system architecture entwined with coherent component modules. Quantities of research and breakthrough in autonomous control of such machines in areas such as machine maneuver control, monitoring, localization, planning, navigation, and communication, accompanied with the desire to fulfil characteristic requirements of different worksites, have urged the industry to add further intelligence into such machines. Automation, accompanied with a requisite degree of efficiency and work output, is thus desirable in this field to achieve a desired output, with minimum manual intervention and a higher level of safety.
In open-pit mining, surface drills are applied to drill multi-meter-deep holes into the ground (generally referred to as a ‘bench’). Drilled holes are subsequently filled with explosives and blasted so that material in the ground (or bench) can be removed. Positions of the drilled holes are generally meticulously planned in patterns according to a geology of the worksite. More particularly, drilled holes generally need to be appropriately or equally spaced apart and are to be aligned and formed along predefined directions. In operation, surface drills are mostly operated and maneuvered rigorously, and may undergo straight-line tramming, row shifting, three-point turning, etc. This is to ensure that at least a majority of drilled holes represent a relatively high level of geometric consistency. However, controlling the path of such machines on a bench accurately is a challenge as low level trajectories pertaining to the operational requirements need to be adjusted generally constantly to account for dynamic machine-ground interaction and the characteristic attributes (or limitations) of machine controllers. Such machine-ground interaction depends on the geometry of the worksite and on other environmental conditions. For example, the worksite may be inclined, undulated on certain portions, generally uneven, or may be soggy or wet, or may become muddy over a period, which may hinder an otherwise well-planned autonomous drilling exercise. To this end, no solution exists that helps the machine to counter and execute a corrective action to an inadvertent maneuver, based on the aforementioned conditions of the worksite, and return the machine to an intended path.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,633,800 ('800 reference) discloses a system and a method pertaining to a remote control of an underground mining vehicle (or simply a vehicle), which allows for manual, autonomous, and tele-operation, of the vehicle. Although the '800 reference discloses a vision based guidance system for autonomous operation of the vehicle, the vision based guidance system discusses usage of a light rope, which is used as a reference guide for a motion of the vehicle relative to a worksite. The '800 reference discusses no solution that would rectify and return a motion of the vehicle to an intended path that is based upon a condition of the worksite or an effect of the vehicle on the worksite.
Accordingly, the system and method of the present disclosure solves one or more problems set forth above and other problems in the art.